Welcome to the Blog of
Dr. Matthew Lewis
Here, you’ll find news from our office, insights and observations from trusted sources in health, information about innovations in the effort to take back your own good health, testimonials from our clients, resources and recommendations of note, and more. Read a post or two and comment on anything that strikes a chord.
Preparing for Virtual Functional Medicine Appointments in Tampa
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It took a health pandemic for people to appreciate the value of being healthy rather than just being “not sick” or being able to manage symptoms. In today’s world, underlying chronic diseases place all of us at a significantly higher risk for complications and death from COVID-19.
As a result, the medical community is beginning to see a growing interest among the general population in the detection, prevention, and treatment of chronic diseases. Among these are diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), autoimmunity and other immune system disorders, kidney disease, and metabolic disorders.
At the same time, advances in technology have made prevention, diagnosis, and management of these and other chronic diseases easier than ever, while reducing the risk of exposure to infectious diseases that may be inherent in physical office visits. Increasingly, patients are scheduling virtual doctor visits via Zoom and other video-conferencing apps, and I am loving these telemedicine consultations.
In this post, I highlight the benefits of telemedicine and provide some tips to optimize these virtual doctor consultations.
Telemedicine Benefits for Doctors and Patients
Today, most doctor appointments last 7-15 minutes at the most. Patients typically spend far more time driving to the office and sitting in the waiting room than they do with their doctors. A 15-minute visit (again, max) may be enough time to check in with your doctor, but it is woefully inadequate for dealing with any complex issues — especially chronic conditions. That is, unless you’re looking for a quick-fix prescription, which isn’t a solution at all. It’s usually just a band-aid.
For doctors and patients committed to tracking down the root cause of health conditions, a consultative approach that provides you with ample time to speak — and be heard — is essential. Telemedicine, it turns out, may provide the additional time and focus to optimize the effectiveness of doctor visits.
As my experience with telemedicine has grown, I have become increasingly aware of its benefits, which include the following:
What’s Making Your Immune System Go Haywire?
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As a doctor trained in the functional medicine approach to healthcare, I spend much of my time discovering and treating chronic illnesses, including those encompassing chronic inflammation, which can often be traced to immune system dysfunction. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates daily how an infection can trigger a powerful immune response resulting in inflammation.
With COVID-19, the inflammation primarily impacts the lungs, but it can affect other organs and tissues, as well. Deaths from COVID-19 are typically a result of excessive inflammation caused by the body’s over-the-top immune response.
Inflammation isn’t all bad. In fact, it’s part of the mechanism responsible for enabling the body to fight disease, recover from injury, and repair damaged tissue. Any trauma to the body’s cells triggers an inflammatory response. The immune system releases inflammatory chemicals, which expand blood vessels and cause them to leak, thereby delivering healing cells and substances to the site that’s injured or under attack. The expansion and leaking of blood vessels are what cause the inflammation.
Unfortunately, the immune system can become the body’s own worst enemy, identifying healthy cells as threats and attacking those cells — a condition referred to as autoimmunity. Various autoimmune diseases can develop as a result, depending on the cause and the organs or tissues being damaged. With type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks pancreatic cells, impairing the body’s ability to produce insulin; with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, the immune system attacks the thyroid; with rheumatoid arthritis, it primarily attacks the joints; with multiple sclerosis (MS) and Guillain-Barré syndrome, it attacks nerve cells; with myocarditis, it attacks the heart; and so on.
The exact mechanism that gives rise to an autoimmune disease remains a mystery. However, evidence suggests that the cause may be traced to a genetic susceptibility triggered by one or more environmental factors, which may include chronic stress, poor diet, gut dysbiosis (an imbalance of microorganisms in the intestines), infections, environmental toxins, as well as other stressors.
Recent research points to viral and bacterial infections as being major triggers for several autoimmune diseases, including the following:
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis – Yes, but what’s the cause?
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Low thyroid causes weight gain, hair loss and can be helped with holistic medicine.
Assessing Your Home For Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue & Inflammation
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If you have been sick and have eluded your doctor's best attempts, check your air quality. Dr. Lewis describes how your home can be at the root cause of your illness.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – Healing Your Frustrations!
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Too many people suffer with Chronic Fatigue without having any real answers or solutions. The problem is complex but the answers are sometimes coming from the air we breathe.
Five Gastroenterologists And Not One Stool Test
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Chronic digestive problems can linger for years. Stool testing can help to find answers and reduce pain and symptoms. The GI Map stool test provides a comprehensive look at the digestive system.
The Hippo In Your Brain – Are you literally losing your mind?
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If your are not sleeping welll or losing memory conventional medicine often falls short of finding causes or solutions. Learn about how cortisol can impact your brain by causing degeneration and what you can do to prevent this.
Mold, It’s Usually NOT Allergy – It’s A Biotoxin Illness Named CIRS
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It’s been a few months since I have updated my blog. So, where was I?
It’s been a challenge to write while balancing my Tampa Functional Medicine practice, family life, and studying. I figured all that out, sort of! I am happy to be back to writing!
The purpose of my blog is to educate health care consumers on a range of health care topics, and most importantly help you to find the root cause of your health concerns. Since starting my blog, I am happy to say there are many patients who have reached out for more information in a one on one setting.
Besides that, what has really left me busy in the last few months….I have been in the “hole” reading through a borage of papers and books concerning CIRS-Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. Over the last four years I have been engaged in testing patients for CIRS- mostly due to mold (more accurately, exposures to biotoxins in water damaged buildings) and Lyme biotoxin. I decided to take the plunge to learn the Shoemaker Protocol for CIRS- biotoxin illness through Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker and I am currently in the certification process.
In January 2019, I attended the
Why Am I Always So Tired? Autoimmune Gastritis Could be to Blame
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Persistent fatigue is a tough mystery to solve. Causes include anemia, anxiety, depression, infection, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), poor diet, too little or too much exercise, poor sleep, liver or kidney disease, and the list goes on. One of the most overlooked conditions that can cause fatigue is autoimmune gastritis— a chronic inflammatory disease in which the immune system mistakenly destroys parietal cells— cells that produce the stomach acid and intrinsic factor (IF), which the body needs to be able to absorb vitamin B12.
As a result, people with autoimmune gastritis often suffer from pernicious anemia — a condition in which the body is unable to absorb the vitamin B12 needed to manufacture healthy red blood cells. Without sufficient numbers of healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body, it is no surprise that people with pernicious anemia suffer persistent fatigue.
When we think about autoimmunity, a few specific conditions come to mind including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS), juvenile diabetes, hyperthyroid, and Lupus. Of course, there are others.
What we don’t often consider are the less discussed or less aggressive autoimmune conditions that can have a large impact of how we feel day to day, lead to more progressive illness, and are often associated with the development of additional autoimmune conditions.
Unfortunately, conventional medical doctors often overlook autoimmune gastritis in patients who report chronic fatigue. They may test for anemia and treat it with iron supplements or test for B12 deficiency, see that your B12 level is fine, and never consider whether your body is actually able to absorb and use that B12. Even worse, some people who report fatigue are simply diagnosed as having
Plant Paradox or Total Bunk? Straight Talk About Lectins
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Quick-fix diets often single out one component of food and blame it for all of our health woes. Shortly thereafter, products begin popping up on shelves that are fat-free, gluten-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, and so on. That brings me to a recent diet that is beginning to gain traction — the lectin-free diet promoted by Dr. Steven Gundry in his book The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain.
In his book, Gundry asserts certain plant proteins called lectins are primarily responsible for a wide range of chronic illnesses, including obesity, autoimmune disorders, and cardiovascular disease. Critics argue that Gundry fails to back up his claim with scientific research, using only his own and his patients’ results on the diet as clinical evidence of its effectiveness.
Others question whether his dietary recommendations are sound. For example, the lectin-free diet calls for replacing whole grains with white bread and white rice, even though these refined grains have been linked to spikes in blood sugar levels.
Where do I stand on The Plant Paradox? Somewhere in between Gundry and his critics. Placing a limit on the amount of lectins consumed in some populations — people with arthritis and autoimmunity, for example — certainly makes sense. However, I believe the book
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